E-Bike Battery Factory Tours in China: Tianneng, Phylion, & Lishen – Part 3 [VIDEOS]

During the ExtraEnergy and China Bicycle Association e-bike factory tours we had the opportunity to visit 3 major e-bike battery companies in China.

Here’s a little intro to each company that we visited.

Tianneng Battery claims to have 40% market share for LEV & e-bike batteries. They make a lot of lead acid batteries but they are in the process of expanding their lithium battery production.

Phylion Battery claims to be the second largest lithium battery pack supplier for the electric bike market in Europe. They have a cloud based diagnostic tool that helps them troubleshoot battery issues remotely.

Lishen Battery makes lithium batteries for high tech companies like Apple, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Lenovo, etc. in addition to batteries for e-bikes and other EV’s.

Make sure you also checkout the introduction to the e-bike factory tours in China, the report from touring Giant Bicycles, Golden Wheel, and Yadea e-bike factories, and the visit to Bafang Motor & King Meter Display.

Tianneng Battery

Tianneng Battery, founded in 1986, is one of the larger battery cell companies in China when it comes to electric bikes. They claim to have over 40% market share for LEV  & e-bikes. Tianneng Battery has 8 production facilities with over 20,000 employees total and they produce over 600,000 cells a day.

In addition to making a large majority of lead acid cells they also have a lead acid recycling facility that they claim has an efficiency of 98% recycling of the materials.

Tianneng sees the future for lithium battery e-bikes in China and they see the opportunity to make more lithium cells as the market grows.

They are currently working on a lithium cell recycling facility. Right now they said that the recycling efficiency of the lithium cells is 30% and they are working to improve that.

Currently the lithium cell market is very competitive with the cells from Japanese and Korean companies being the favorites. Tianneng is working to establish themselves as a quality Chinese lithium cell brand in order to compete in the global marketplace.

ExtraEnergy & CBA tour crew with the Tianneng Battery management in their lobby area.

A video posted by Electric Bike Report (@electricbikereport) on Apr 8, 2015 at 10:54am PDT

Here is a look at the material production for the lithium cells.

This is a highly automated lithium cell production machine that requires precise calibration.

Here’s a closer look at the lithium cells coming out of the assembly line.

Tianneng has a significant battery quality testing lab.

This is their cell puncture strength testing machine.

And the high and low temperature heat test box.

And then the free fall testing equipment.

The Tianneng Battery showroom had a number of different e-bike battery packs on display.

And a display of the different electric vehicles that they supply battery cells for.

The members of the ExtraEnergy and CBA tour had a chance to talk with the Tianneng management about the future of the Chinese e-bike industry. Tianneng sees an increase in demand for the lithium powered e-bikes in the future.

A video posted by Electric Bike Report (@electricbikereport) on Apr 8, 2015 at 11:01am PDT

And there was a little time for some friendly competition! In the video above Hannes Neupert from ExtraEnergy races against Justinas Cerniauskus from Baltik Vairas Bicycles to see who can generate the most energy.

Phylion Battery

Phyllion Battery, founded in 2003, is focused on complete lithium batteries packs for LEV’s and e-bikes. They claim to be the second largest lithium battery pack supplier for the electric bike market in Europe.

When they started in 2003 they spent considerable time developing the batteries and initially they were too expensive for the Chinese market. They sold those initial batteries to the European ebike market because it was not as price sensitive. Now that prices for lithium packs have come down somewhat they are selling more batteries to the Chinese market.

Phylion believes the price of lithium batteries will come down as production is scaled up.

They plan on selling e-bike batteries in the U.S. market at some point and some of that may be focused towards the local e-bike dealers as replacement battery packs.

The ExtraEnergy & CBA tour crew in front of the Phylion headquarters.

Here are examples of the Phylion 36V 10ah lithium electric bike battery packs.

In this picture you can see a diagnostic module that can upload battery data to the cloud for analysis by Phylion. This will help with troubleshooting problems and they will ship out replacement battery to customer quickly based on this diagnostic information. Phylion offers a 2 year warranty for the batteries.

Phylion a provided a good presentation on why they are focused on the increase of the lithium electric bike battery market.

Here’s a look at the global LEV market. Yes, China is a huge market!

You can see that Phylion’s lithium batteries are popular in Europe but it looks like the market in China is significant.

They are supplying batteries to some of the larger Chinese and European brands.

You can see that the Chinese scooter type e-bike market has been fairly consistent for the last 8 years.

This is a good breakdown of the different e-bike types currently making up the Chinese e-bike market.

Phylion sees great potential for lithium powered e-bikes in China in the next few years.

According to Phylion, the main reason consumers don’t like lead acid batteries is because they have a short life span and they are very heavy.

A video posted by Electric Bike Report (@electricbikereport) on Apr 8, 2015 at 11:09am PDT

At the end of our visit several of the members of the tour had a chance to test drive an electric van with Phylion batteries.

Lishen Battery

Listen Battery Company, founded in 1997, makes lithium batteries for a lot of high tech companies like Apple, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Lenovo, etc.

A lot of their business is focused on the export market because they make high quality batteries that are more expensive.

The ExtraEnergy and CBA e-bike tour crew in the Lishen Battery lobby.

Right now only 3-5% of their battery sales are for electric bikes but they do see the potential for that to grow.

Lishen has collaborated with Daimler–Benz, Volkswagen, etc. on lithium batteries for electric vehicles.

During the tour of Lishen we learned of their history in the high tech lithium battery market.  It is impressive to see the list of the companies that they work with:  Apple, Samsung, Motorola, LG, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Lenovo, etc.

More Reports

Stay tuned for more reports of the factories and companies that we visited.

Make sure you also checkout the introduction to the e-bike factory tours in China, the report from touring Giant Bicycles, Golden Wheel, and Yadea e-bike factories, and the visit to Bafang Motor & King Meter Display.

-Pete

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